It's winter. It's cold, very cold. And we have snow, a lot of snow.
It's winter. I get it. It's supposed to be very cold and produce a lot of snow.
We have not had a real heavy snowfall in over 10 years, in 2014, when the squirrels learned to jump over baffles and tried to pry apart feeders to get at the seed because thick snow and ice blocked them from getting to the nuts they hid in the lawn.
We have had extreme cold since then, when the "polar vortex" breached its usual boundaries and moved south. (As usual I blame climate change.) But getting two storms of three inches each within three days (with more predicted in the coming weeks) is a throwback to an earlier time when heavy snow in my part of the country was more common.
So I went out to photograph this event today.
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Thanks to the snow, the yew hedge was weighed down. I usually knock some snow off the hedge so the branches won't be in the way of the driveway plow but this time I didn't get to it before they came. There are birds that roost in this hedge, different ones depending on the season, which is why I have refused to cut it down. I know the deer will come and eat as much as they can reach until the snow melts and the hedge stands tall again.
I plan to buy or borrow a chainsaw to cut some branches at some point this year. For now, the birds have their shelter and my brush pile, to the right of this picture behind the branches, is inaccessible for pickup this month. I hope to put several months' worth of fallen limbs out at the end of February.
As you can see, my compost pile is also inaccessible. It is also frozen. So that means I will be filling old coffee containers with my compost, putting them on my enclosed porch until the pile defrosts.
These roof icicles are over the back plot. When they start melting in earnest the water will provide moisture for various plants.
No matter how deep the snow, the birds must be fed. I drag the shovel behind me to smooth out something of a path, then carry out the feeders. I did not have feeders out while it was snowing and so far I've seen few birds coming for food. But I've no doubt they'll be back.
After seeing the snow on the trees and shrubs the next thing I saw were the tracks. These tracks are deer. (I've also seen squirrel, fox, weasel, birds and perhaps raccoon. Here in the expanding suburbs, the wild world isn't that far away.)
Once the snow stopped the deer started looking for food. With the grass covered that meant checking for dropped seeds from the feeders and probing the deer netting for weaknesses that will let them get at the plants. This is why I have burlap covering the fencing on my back plot and have double-netted my two front plots. It is also why I take in the feeders at night. I have seen deer come to the house feeder and tip it to spill out the seed. They also climb on the baffles to get to the feeders on the other feeder pole. (A hoof punched a hole in the old battle, now replaced by something far stronger.)
Spruce Bringsgreen always looks so dignified in his white winter coat. But after a few days of sun on him the snow will slide off his down-slopping branches and his natural blueish-green coloring will show.
The dogwood also looks dignified in her snow coat. I have noticed buds forming on her branches, which means flowers in the spring and then fruits later on for the birds. This is the tree on which I hang the house wren nest box. The tree is surviving having about half of it go dead and then be cut off.
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